WoW – More fun together!

Keep on pulling!

I’ve been reading a lot of depressing posts lately. Peoples’ raids not raiding, having problems, or dying entirely. There’s an air of malaise and oddly it doesn’t even feel like 4.2 is going to pull us out of it. On my server, several of the more elite raid guilds have just stopped raiding. When Crits hits 12/12, we’re going to be in the top twenty on our server.

One guildie who wanted a Fri/Sat raid for an alt took that alt out and shopped hard for a 25 man raid, before finally joining a ten man raid because there just aren’t 25 mans any more.

Repgrind‘s horde guild has attendance issues – though I wish that we could match their dedication when they do get in! They beat us to Cho’gall and it sounds likely they’ll have Nef down before we do, seeing as we haven’t even started work on him yet.

My own raid suffers attendance issues. We have people on vacation, people with weddings coming up, people with business trips – basically, normal life stuff that gets in the way of WoW. Fortunately we have not yet had to miss a weekend of raiding. I think there’s a couple reasons for this:

Most importantly I have a crew of people who love raiding together and have rearranged their schedules to be able to raid. They work hard and have fun and we wouldn’t be 10/12 without everyone pulling his own weight.

Second, I have a firm policy that we raid at 7 pm Friday and Saturday night, if we have to 9 man things, get pugs from Trade chat, or green-geared alts from guild. I don’t care. We raid. Yes, some weeks we’ve had three priests and two mages; what matters is that we raided. Yes, sometimes we’ve wiped on Magmaw because we’re breaking in a new healer. I don’t care. We don’t bench our whole raid.

Third and I think this is key – Crits and Giggles has three raids right now, two nights a week each. I think we have at least 7 people who raid in two or more of those raids, and sometimes as many as 4 in all three raids. But that also means there’s a lot of folks who have one raid. And those folks tend to have alts that can come and help out when one of the raids needs a warm body. The guild has a critical mass of people who know the fights, who know how to raid, and who are ready and eager.

All three raids have different atmospheres. I think our raid is a little chattier in vent. We also run longer hours. Sun/Mon feels more businesslike. The Tues/Thurs raid is still getting its footing. Rev and I started running with them last week and the raid’s at…. 4/6 in BWD and the first boss in each of the other raids, with Twin Dragons scheduled to die this week. That raid has some veteran raiders, in roles they don’t usually play, and some new raiders learning the game, and it’s really coalescing nicely.

It’s not a strategy that will work for every guild, but I wish more of the 25 man guilds that broke into two 10 man runs had tried an approach like that. If you’ve got 25 raiders, at least a few of them are the types to have multiple raid geared alts. Carefully schedule raids on non-competing nights and let people pick which works best for them. There will always be people who can’t raid Tuesdays, or Fridays, or Sundays, but who would love to raid anyway. Keep them in your guild rather than letting them go elsewhere!

I do recommend if anyone attempts this in their own guild – do not let any current raid leader add another raid. First, they’ll burn out. Second, there will always be one raid that they favor over the other and that will hurt the second raid. Third it becomes too much the “SuperproraiderX guild” and not the “Our Team” guild.

What if it’s too late? What if you really are trying desperately to raid every week and calling it every time? At that point you’ve got two options. Recruit, or die. It sounds brutal but it’s true. If you can pull in new bodies, you’ve got a shot to regenerate. If you can’t, it’s probably better to recognize that sooner rather than later. It may be possible to negotiate a merge with another guild rather than losing people piecemeal. I know with the advent of guild perks that guild changing and merging is less popular. Perhaps the upcoming “Guild rename” service will help.

Finally, keep communication with your raid strong. If week after week you’re not raiding, or only raiding one night, let them know what your plan for the situation is. Tell them when and what they may go pug. Don’t paint it as the end of the world, but don’t act like nothing is wrong. Your raiders are smarter than that and they deserve honesty.

Firelands is coming. I’m excited about it because I’ve got a strong raid and a plan to keep it strong. Look at it as the opportunity to rebuild, or to strengthen your existing raid. But don’t expect things to just magically improve. If you want to keep raiding, there’s work to be done.

Honestly? I don’t think Blizzard did anything wrong. I predicted that 25 mans would decrease because why herd 25 people when you can get the same rewards with 10? The server-first type guilds may still care, but the rest of us? Meh. They are either breaking up into 10 mans, or just plain breaking up.

As far as attendance issues … Rift came out, spring came out, vacations and summer jobs and .. etc etc etc. It’s just real life. It’s not the end of the world. It’s a natural reduction in the number of tourists who hopped the bandwagon when Cata came out and weren’t going to be here for the long haul anyway. It’s a speed bump …guilds will come and go but it’s a natural cycle of the game.

Tough questions. Making the gear common surely killed 25 man raiding… but since I vastly prefer 10 mans I hesitate to finger that change as the culprit. I would like to think the current level of ‘meh’ is the same as always at this time of the dev cycle and this is just the first time I have looked at it from the hardcore raider perspective.

We have two things at play here. One is the guild leveling that encourages guilds to stay together and the other is that 10 mans rule over 25 right now. With making both changes there was really no way Bliz could fully predict how the population at large would swing. What I think is happening right now is that every Tom Dick and Harry is trying to be a raiding guild because getting a few people together is not supper hard. In any given guild you will have people above the average for that guild and people below it. Those that are above… who want to raid… in the past might have, as their skills and gear got better than their guildies, gone shopping for a better raiding guild. I think less of that is happening because those people are finding themselves as the anchors of fledgling guild runs that they hope might work. Between that and the guild leveling stuff I think there is a large tendency for people to no change guilds. And, for those that DO change guilds, there are lots and lots of mediocre ‘raiding guilds’ out there looking for a few more raiders… so it is very hard to be sure which to join. So I think what we are seeing is raiding ‘talent’ being spread thin. I think this is causing 2 effects. One, it is increasing the level of raiding skill of the population at large as more people than ever before try it. And, Two, it is starving the hardcore raids of enough newblood to stay viable. Those at the bleeding edge need a small but steady stream of fresh, and skilled, meat to feed the grinder that is the hardcore raiding schedule. As people naturally burn out there are now fewer replacements, because of the above reasons.

While I agree raiding has run into a funk lately, I dont think its any different from any other year. Once winter is over, and people start coming out of hibernation to enjoy the weather outside (although its done nothing but rain) raid attendance starts the decline. Granted Rift came out and alot of players jumped ship to check it out.. but alot of them are coming back to wow..

Alot of people got burned out on T11 content early. Whether they thought the content was easy/hard, all depended on their guild/server/raid group. Once firelands drops, you’ll see people flocking in like sheep trying to get a chance to raid. And with all the current ilvl 359 T11 gear switching to Justice Points when 4.2 drops.. your going to see alot of people farming to get geared enough quickly.

WoW insider had a really interesting article the other day saying “Firelands will not save your guild!” The whole article basically compared to your blog post in which they talked about the funk. It was a good read.

I had the same approach except at times we would start undermanned if it was early content. Sometimes it would give us an opportunity to try wacky strategies. It’s fun but not for everyone (my raiders were the over 35+ bunch in case you are curious).

Not related to raiding current content but we did clear Karazhan with 6 level 68-69 (1 tank, 1 healer, 4 DPS) a few weeks ago. We had a few wipes – I forgot to explain a few fight mechanics to the 4 players who had never seen the content – but it was fun and everyone showed up for the second evening.

The problem is it just reinforced my impression the leveling game is broken beyond repair.